Making it Public: Public Art Fosters Community Pride in Clinton, MA

In 2024, staff from the town of Clinton, MA, participated in the 2024 Making it Public for Massachusetts Municipalities cohort trainings that focused on developing more fair and transparent practices for supporting public artmaking. After participating in the series of trainings, each municipality had the opportunity to put learnings into practice by putting out a Call for Temporary Public Art with funding from NEFA. Lee Abdella from Clinton, MA shares reflections on the impacts of the program in this blog. 

It’s a common scene in many towns:  a midday group of men ranging from retirees to construction workers, grabbing a quick lunch from Mr. Bob’s hot dog cart in Clinton. The conversation is pretty typical too - the weather, the Red Sox or the latest road project. But this summer’s “topic of the day” was anything but typical at Mr. Bob’s as the installation of a 200 x 24 ft mural became the backdrop for this scene.

To give some background, lifelong Clinton resident Bob Parker always sets up his hot dog cart in the same spot: on the corner of an under-used park lined by a massive concrete wall in disrepair. At more than 100 years old, this cracked monolith is a physical gateway into Clinton’s revitalized downtown. As the wall transformed from eye-sore into artwork, Bob transformed into the unofficial “mural ambassador” for the town of Clinton.

Before participating in NEFA’s Making it Public for Massachusetts Municipalities program (MIP), the town of Clinton was coming off the heels of a multiyear downtown revitalization project that saw the potential for public art to activate a more vibrant and diverse downtown. The trainings provided a framework for engaging artists in this work with more fair and transparent processes. Also having the space to exchange ideas, questions and concerns with fellow municipalities within the cohort was invaluable.

A small but important takeaway from the MIP trainings was to pay all finalists for their design concept. This information put into the Call for Artists conveyed that Clinton valued artists’ time and effort regardless of whether they were the chosen artist or not. This effort yielded a far greater response than we could have imagined as we received applications from professional muralists all over New England.

Interestingly, our project’s greatest obstacle became the key to its success. Knowing that our budget would not stretch to cover the entire 200’ wall, our Call for Artists identified a 20’x40’ section for the mural.

The call required the three finalists to tour the site in-person to understand the wall’s condition, surroundings and orientation.  Upon seeing the wall’s prominent location and its drab appearance, all three finalists proactively offered to paint the entire wall. Taken by surprise, we could not have been more appreciative of their generosity and began to think of ways to offset the cost of painting a much bigger mural.

The review committee selected Artifakt Studios to bring the mural to life. A true partner, they understood the community significance of the project and were open and collaborative to making this happen.

We worked on streamlining the process and providing in-kind support as much as possible to allow Artifakt Studios to focus on their creative process. The town took on the preparing the wall for painting, applying a specialized basecoat to seal the damaged 100-year-old concrete and also provided the town-owned scissor lift for the duration of the project. Additionally, when that lift could not reach the very top of our wall, we also arranged for a large-scale scissor lift to be generously donated by United Rentals of Worcester.

Throughout the MIP course, the importance of public participation was discussed. Taking this to heart, we asked for community input on design elements, conducted interviews with the local newspaper and shared social media updates throughout to get folks involved and enthused.

Artifakt Studios collaborated with the Clinton Historical Society and well-known, local photographer John Cannon to obtain historical and current photographs to incorporate into their design.  In addition, we collaborated with our schools' art teachers to bring the mural into the classroom resulting in 800 “coloring book pages” of the mural’s outline going to Clinton’s youngest artists who could design their own.

As Artifakt Studios began to paint the wall, Mr. Bob took on his unofficial role as “mural ambassador” with enthusiasm, showing the approved design on a special, oversized printout and telling all about the site preparation or the historical significance of the design elements. No public art has ever had a better advocate.

The formerly underused park became THE place in town to take a break.  People of all ages and backgrounds would stop, marvel at Artifakt Studios’ skills and stay a while to see the wall transformation take shape (some brought chairs!). Truly it was the best show in town.

The true takeaway from Clinton’s MIP experience is a town open and enthusiastic for more public art. In a world where little is universally agreed upon, this project has been embraced by the entire community. People now can see firsthand how art can create pride of place. To continue this momentum, Clinton worked with State Representative Meghan Kilcoyne, a Clinton resident and an active supporter of our downtown’s rebirth, to request and receive a $25,000 earmark in the state’s 2026 budget to create a downtown mural program. Currently, we are in the early stages of program development and actively using our MIP experience as a successful roadmap.